New Statesman – Smooth operator

There is something ridiculous about a billionaire with access to No 10 and the White House portraying himself as the arch-enemy of established power. As for political and economic freedom, this champion has shown himself the uncritical defender of the worst remaining communist dictatorship on earth, in China.

This is the man whose Sunday Times campaigned to prove that HIV was not the cause of Aids, and lied about the Gibraltar documentary Death on the Rock. His Fox TV has become a byword for chauvinistic ranting, yet his publications have the chutzpah to lecture the BBC about the quality of its journalism. Now he seems to have acquired the same influence over Blair as he did over Thatcher. He calls anyone who stands in his way an elite snob while he picks our political pockets. We have been warned.

via New Statesman – Smooth operator.

New Statesman – Smooth operator

Page unpicks the shabby machinations that allowed Rupert Murdoch to acquire the Times. He shows how the dramatic move of the Murdoch papers to Wapping in 1986 was caused by the immense sums Murdoch borrowed to buy Fox. The battle with the unions, Page judges, “had little to do with the reform of the British media system and much to do with the financial desperation of News Corp”.

Page contends that Murdoch owes his over-mighty influence not to journalistic talent, nor even to business genius, but to the smooth skills of the courtier. (One can swear a lot, and still be smooth.) All his life he has sniffed out where power lay and flattered it.

via New Statesman – Smooth operator.

David Grossman Speaks Out Against War With Iran | The Nation

“Israel,” said Grossman, “is a deeply traumatized community that finds it very difficult to separate between real dangers and echoes of past traumas, and sometimes I think our prime minister fires himself up in mixing these real dangers with those echoes from the past.”

He said he feared that Netanyahu and Barak would bomb Iran partly out of a perceived strategic need to back up their threats with action, but also because of what he sees as Netanyahu’s sense of historic responsibility to save the “people of eternity.”

“He has this idea that we are the people of eternity, am ha’netzach from the Bible, and our negotiations, as he sees it, are with eternity, with the primal currents of history and mankind, while the United States, with all due respect, is just another superpower like Rome or Athens or Babylon, and we’ve survived them all,” said Grossman. “I’m afraid that this way of thinking might encourage Netanyahu to take the step” of attacking Iran.

Grossman’s son, Uri, was killed in the 2006 Lebanon War two days after the author called publicly for a cease-fire, and while he was writing the last chapters of his greatly acclaimed epic of war and peace, To the End of the Land. An impassioned critic of Israeli militarism and treatment of Palestinians, he deplored the overkill of the December 2008–January 2009 war in Gaza, and took part in last year’s weekly protests against the dispossession of Palestinians in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, getting beaten by Israeli police at one of them.

via David Grossman Speaks Out Against War With Iran | The Nation.

The Blood on Murdoch’s Hands » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

1. Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law.

The Fox News Channel is endless propaganda for war, and various other deadly policies. As Robin Beste points out,

“Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers and TV channels have supported all the US-UK wars over the past 30 years, from Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands war in 1982, through George Bush Senior and the first Gulf War in 1990-91, Bill Clinton’s war in Yugoslavia in 1999 and his undeclared war on Iraq in 1998, George W. Bush’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, with Tony Blair on his coat tails, and up to the present, with Barack Obama continuing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and now adding Libya to his tally of seven wars.”

In this video, Murdoch confesses to having used his media outlets to support the Iraq War and to having tried to shape public opinion in favor of the war. That is the very definition of propaganda for war.

via The Blood on Murdoch’s Hands » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names.

The Life and Crimes of a Global Goebbels » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

Murdoch’s rise to power took off in Sydney in 1964, when he acquired an afternoon tabloid, the Daily Mirror. On March 12, the Mirror front paged a report on “promiscuity” among the pupils of a city high school, which was based on the contents of a young girl’s diary. The resulting uproar led to the diarist and a fellow student being expelled from school. A job well done.

That’s where the story ended as far the Mirror was concerned, though not for those involved. The 13 year old schoolboy named in the diary, Digby Bamford, was found hanging from his backyard clothesline, having committed suicide. This news was “cordoned off” from public consumption. Even rival papers kept the secret, until a disgruntled Murdoch journalist tipped off an independent magazine. The author of the “school sex” diary was examined by a doctor from the Child Welfare Department and found to be a virgin. During an interview years later, I reminded Murdoch of this event and his reaction was sharp: “Don’t you ever make mistakes?” Of course I do. Many. After acquiring the News of the World in London in 1971, Rupert discovered another diary, while he was campaigning against a popular BBC TV show, Top of the Pops. His paper accused its stars of “promiscuity” with young dancers in the audience. One of these was Samantha MacAlpine, aged 15, whose “leatherette bound book”, according Murdoch’s news desk, “could well blow wide open the scandal at the BBC”. The day after this report, Samantha MacAlpine committed suicide.

The News of the World tried to cover itself with the headline, THIS GIRL WAS A VICTIM NOW SHE IS DEAD, but the coroner stated that Samantha’s diary was “pure fantasy. unconnected with reality”, (like much Murdoch journalism). A Scotland Yard officer accused the paper of being “ludicrous and irresponsible”. As is the Murdoch style, the evidence from the inquest was kept from the readers. Also suppressed was the statement of the forensic pathologist, that in his opinion, Samantha had died a virgin.

Two weeks ago, when young Australian Jack Thomas appealed his conviction for receiving funds from Al Qaeda and holding a false passport, he was acquitted by the Victorian Court of Appeal.

via The Life and Crimes of a Global Goebbels » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names.

The Life and Crimes of a Global Goebbels » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

On August 6, Serene Sabbagh and a colleague sent a joint letter of resignation to Fox News: “Not only are you an instrument of the Bush White House, and Israeli propaganda, you are war mongers with no sense of decency, nor professionalism.” A verdict which is widely echoed. “Fox News has had reporters running around northern Israel chronicling every rocket attack and every Israeli mobilization, but has shown little or no interest in anything happening on the other side of the border”, noted Andrew Gumbel in the UK’s Independent.

News Corp had “walked away from professional journalism and crossed over into dutiful propaganda”, wrote another analyst,” a dangerous new chapter even for Fox News”. The whole organization had shifted beyond warmongering into deep censorship, where it “purposely cordoned off topics of discussion In fact, I could not find a single, authentic, independent expert on Arab politics and history who appeared on Fox News to discuss the roots of the escalating violence. Not one.”

In the editorial pages of Murdoch’s antipodean flagship, The Australian, the bombing of Beirut is presented as “Israel doing Lebanon a favour” and restive Arabs are described as “Nazis”. None of this should be surprising, as Murdoch revealed to the Hollywood Reporter that his media ventures are “not as important to me as spreading my personal political beliefs” (November 23, 2005). And these beliefs are dangerous. Murdoch’s influential Weekly Standard advocates the pursuit of “regime change in Syria . and a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait?”

It does not seem to figure in Murdoch’s personal accounting that over half a million civilians are now dead or disfigured as a result of the wars he has already promoted. Instead of reconsidering his politics, like other lapsed neocons, Murdoch is still blazing away with his tools of the trade: hate, lies, fear and censorship.

via The Life and Crimes of a Global Goebbels » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names.

Murdoch » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

So strong was this influence that others newspapers and television networks (like Channel Four and the BBC) lost confidence in themselves and became pale imitations in search of circulations and ratings.  Classical music, loved by many regardless of class or creed or race, was considered elitist and disallowed on BBC 2.

Thatcher’s Blue Labour heirs, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown continued the worship of money and Murdoch. Blair continuously abased himself before the media baron. Brown did the same. Murdoch press editors became regular guests at official residences; their own private parties regularly attended by Prime Ministers and their entourage. Just yesterday Murdoch said that he and Gordon Brown met regularly. Their families became friends. David Cameron followed suit, making it clear that despite his class background he could be just like Blair and embrace anyone and everything that linked big money and politics.

It was Peter Oborne, a journalist writing for the always-conservative Daily Telegraph who provided a coruscating pen-portrait of Cameron, suggesting that he had consciously descended to the sewer by becoming part of the louche Chipping Norton set:

“He should never have employed Andy Coulson, the News of the World editor, as his director of communications. He should never have cultivated Rupert Murdoch. And ? the worst mistake of all ? he should never have allowed himself to become a close friend of Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of the media giant News International, whose departure from that company in shame and disgrace can only be a matter of time. We are talking about a pattern of behaviour here. Indeed, it might be better described as a course of action. Mr Cameron allowed himself to be drawn into a social coterie in which no respectable person, let alone a British prime minister, should be seen dead.”

via Murdoch » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names.

A Real History of Rupert Murdoch » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

Operationally, all this requires a grotesque machinery of bullying, conformity, manipulation and toadyism. Mainly, it is staffed by people who have no exit, as Murdoch service at senior level has always severely dented a resume. Now and then able people became involved: some find havens where they can work decently and inconspicuously, but most are ejected, or self-eject. (The latter option is disliked. When The Times caught tabloid fever and self-trashed its image, Simon Jenkins was hired to do cosmetic repairs but would only sign for two years. Murdoch said he preferred to fire editors himself, but had to accept: of course, he then beat Jenkins to the punch.)

When I wrote The Murdoch Archipelago with Elaine Potter, we justified our title by saying that the Murdochs had built a domain as close to personal tyranny as the legal framework of the liberal West will allow. Most observers agree on this, and so do ex-denizens unless they hope for renewed Newscorp favors.

Predictably, dad’s admiration involves that smelly old-class warhorse, the Establishment. The critter exists only to be abjured by ruling-class members, determined to escape whatever obligations of law or honor such status might yet attract. Then actions, which would be greedy and irresponsible in a confessed kingpin, become innocent rebellion, undertaken to toss off oppression by invisible elites. Murdoch’s acolytes routinely use such hocus-pocus to obscure the true nature of the boss ? often from themselves. If you can see Murdoch, power’s long-term toady, in that light, nothing’s beyond your belief, and envisioning the Post as a palladium of journalism presents no difficulty. And his long support of it, against disastrous market performance (and by now, surely, a thinned-out political value), indicates that Murdoch feels that way himself.

It is, after all, his own creation as nothing else is. Fox News was the work of Roger Ailes; the Sun ? of Larry Lamb and Kelvin McKenzie; the Newscorp (as against original) Sunday Times ?  of Andrew Neil; the Sky satellite network ? of the ravening Sam Chisholm. To be sure, they all accepted him as overlord, with sad consequences for their products (and often their ambitions). But, Murdoch myth apart, all of them were hardened pros, doing the hands-on stuff themselves (and fending Rupert off wherever possible).

via A Real History of Rupert Murdoch » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names.

A Real History of Rupert Murdoch » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

Only one proprietor solved this classic media-management problem creatively, and it wasn’t Rupert. Vere Harmsworth, while absorbing financial setbacks at his flagship Daily Mail, invested heavily in the skills of brilliant, strong-minded editors. The Mail raised its sale 50 per cent between 1970 and 2000 ? and by organic growth, not transfer from other titles. Pardonably repelled by its berserk politics, liberals often miss the Mail’s populist intelligence. It is formidable nonetheless.

via A Real History of Rupert Murdoch » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names.

A Real History of Rupert Murdoch » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

At Versailles, Keith was Billy’s ever-present aide in striving to make the Peace Conference into a vicious cock-up, rich in racist and imperialist content. Curiously, the pair would have had zero leverage but for the failure of a plot of Keith’s, which sought in 1918 to remove Australia’s battlefield commander on the Western Front, John Monash, for being an unheroic Jew. (Monash wrote home that it was a bore having to fight a “pogrom” at the same time as fight Ludendorff.) The overall commander, General Douglas Haig, wouldn’t play: and Monash’s divisions led the British breakthrough at Amiens which, ruining Ludendorff, put Germany ? suddenly, unexpectedly? at the Allies’ mercy.

via A Real History of Rupert Murdoch » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names.